Ecological Intelligence

“We have to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing. The Earth doesn’t need healing. We do.”

These words, from South African physician and naturalist Ian McCallum, close Daniel Goleman’s new book Ecological Intelligence: how Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy can Change Everything. Goleman’s book is an ambitious work that goes beyond the usual cries that humans are screwing up the planet and discusses how we can use market forces to change that behavior.

Not that Goleman ignores the fact that humans are screwing up the planet. (Or rather, screwing up the planet for humanity, as with the opening quote.) He goes into great detail to show how those of us in the US continue to pollute the air, ground, water and our bodies, long after science has shown us to be doing great harm. The reason for this is threefold: 1) Industry doesn’t change its practices because it might not be profitable to do so; 2) Government doesn’t regulate change, because political elections are financed by Industry; and 3) Consumers don’t insist on changes because we aren’t aware of the harm we are doing.

To combat this, Goleman introduces the reader to the concept of “Radical Transparancy,” wherein a product’s devalue (i.e. the harm it can do) is as readily known as its value. Studies have shown that if consumers are aware of the social, environment and especially health impacts of a product, most will change their purchasing habits even if it means spending more to buy the better product.

To illustrate, Goleman tells the tale of trans fat, which under the label “shortening” was a staple of home and industrial food production for 100 years. However, when the Institute of Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration independently issued reports at the turn of the 21^st century detailing the health risks associated with trans fat, public concern reached heightened levels. When the FDA issued labeling requirements indicating the level of trans fat in foods, the agency in effect issued the death knell. Trans fat has been almost completely eliminated from foods in the US, because informed consumers do not want to buy products containing trans fats.

Not all stories are as cut-and-dried as that of trans fat. In some cases the risks are less immediate (global warming), or less personal (worker treatment), or less obvious (tainted water supplies).

To fully understand these risks, we need to understand more than simply how a product is made and how it is disposed of. We also need to understand what impacts result from the production of components, and of the subcomponents, and so forth. We also need to understand the impacts of shipping, packaging, and how the product is used. This is called “Life Cycle Analysis,” a cradle-to-grave study of a product’s impact.

One such study was made by the folks at Proctor & Gamble, who discovered that the greatest impact from its production of Tide laundry detergent was in the way the product was used. More specifically, the energy required to heat the laundry water was greater than the impacts incurred in manufacturing and transporting the product. This inspired P&G to develop a detergent that is just as effective using cold water.

Goleman treats the reader to several such anecdotes, and highlights several companies in addition to Proctor and Gamble (like Interface and (gulp!) Wal Mart) that have taken it upon themselves to improve the impacts of their businesses. Goleman also discusses the way that the US Government’s loose approval guidelines, the phenomenon of Unintended Consequences, and the corporate practice of “Greenwashing,” make it more difficult for the consumer to fully understand the impact of their purchasing practices. Thus the need for Radical Transparency.

Ecological Intelligence does a thorough job of describing the perils that face the unwitting consumer in the United States, and how industry and government work in tandem to obfuscate those perils. The reader comes away understanding that the threats to our health, the environment, and the people in third-world countries are real and avoidable. Where the book falls somewhat short is in offering solutions. This is because the Radical Transparency industry is in its infancy. The resources available to the consumer are not easily accessed at the point of sale (or, more importantly, in the aisle when the shopper is making a decision). Those that do exist still have large gaps in compiling the massive amounts of data on all products available for sale in the US.

This is an important book, and perhaps the first step in bringing the need for Radical Transparency into the collective consciousness. I believe that the population of this country is grossly unaware of the true impact of the way that we live. With the government beholden to industries that are unwilling to make risky changes that might impact the bottom line, the impetus for change must come from the grassroots. I believe that an educated population will generate the force required to shift the markets. We just need the information.

The following web sites are referenced in Goleman’s book. They have their shortfalls, but begin to provide the information that will help us change the way business is done in the US.

http://www.goodguide.com/ to find safe, healthy and green products.

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/ for Skin Deep, the Cosmetics Safety Database.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

The summer reading series continues this week with a review of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray. The book was published in 1999 by Milkweed Editions, and was recently brought to my attention when Ms. Ray was the keynote speaker at a conservation meeting that I attended recently. Ray is a naturalist and activist who grew up in southern Georgia and now resides in Vermont.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is equal parts memoir and tribute to the longleaf pine forest that once dominated the landscape of Georgia. Ray grew up as the child of a deeply religious patriarch who owned a junkyard along Highway 1 in Baxley, Georgia. Ray recounts her family history beginning with her great grandfather. Her family were "Crackers," the hard-drinking, hard-fighting Scottish immigrants who settled in Southern Georgia. Ray's grandfather was an enigma, prone to bouts of violence and lenghty disappearances into the forests. Ms. Ray portrays her grandfather as inseparable from the wildlife that populates the forest, and therefore sees herself and her people as one with the landscape. It is upon this foundation that the story is built.

The longleaf pine forest is largely a thing of the past in Georgia. The trees have been heavily logged and subsequently converted to slash pine forest or development. The resultant impact on the entire ecosystem is profound, even where the land remains forested. Longleaf pine has been replaced with slash pine, which grows more quickly and therefore generates more income than it's slow-growing cousin. However, the slash also grows more thickly than the longleaf and chokes out the understory. Sections of the forest that have been developed have fragmented the landscape. Ray walks us though how these developments have endangered the flora and fauna associated with the longleaf forest. Wiregrass and pine savannahs, Indigo Snakes and Gopher Tortoises, Flatwoods Salamanders and Bachman's Sparrows, all are evolved to live among the longleaf pines. Human greed and gluttony, the impulse to cut and sell every last tree in the forest, imperil these living things and many more. Ray's compassion for the survival of the forest invoked the New York times to consider her the Rachel Carson of the Southeast forests. (See my sidebar, below.)

While the discussion of the longleaf forest is compelling, it is Ray's recounting her family history that sets this book apart from what one would expect from a "nature" book. Ray speaks frankly about the violent nature of her father, grandfather, and other ancestors. She also speaks frankly about the mental illness that gripped many of these same men. Her grandfather, Charlie Ray, is consumed both with illness and violence, and he proves to be the most fascinating character in the book. Charlie Ray was essentially a feral man, posessing a violent streak and a communion with wild animals that evokes the image of a man raised by wolves. His stories are the most entertaining, but it is Ray's father who is the most dominant personality in the book, the one who seems to have had the greatest impact on the young Janisse.

Frank Ray was a devout man, a strict disciplinarian who did not allow a television in his house. He dealt in scraps, running a junkyard and making a living bartering for items that many people simply throw away. It was a struggle to provide for his four children, and they were quite poor, though never without food on the table. Frank Ray did not shy away from using a belt to discipline his children, and he also had a bout with mental illness. Janisse Ray recounts these facts without judgement, and she makes a point to ensure the reader that she knew that her father loved her and her siblings profoundly. It's an honest reflection of real life, but the relationship feels unresolved in this book. Perhaps this is by design, as most relationships are not lent to simple resolutions, and regardless, Frank Ray is still alive. I'm sure that the relationship continues to evolve.

It is the descriptions of Ray's childhood that were most challenging for me as a reader - not due to the content in any way, but in my personal relationship to the era. Because Janisse Ray had such a rural upbringing, with no television and with a junkyard as a playground, the stories evoked mental images of the 1940s. However, Janisse Ray is a direct contemporary of mine, having been born just three years before me. We grew up at the same time and in the same country, yet the stories seem quite distant to me. It is doubtless, however, that my reality and hers crossed paths. Ray may have gone to school in dresses sewn by her mother, but she certainly had classmates who wore the ghastly polyester fashions that were in vogue during the 1970's. She may have grown up without a television, but she attended school with kids who spent lunch hours discussing the prior evening's episode of Mork and Mindy. It's a challenge to me, because I don't believe that my personal experiences are worthy of a memoir, but I find Janisse Ray's to be a very interesting story.

Ray's concern for the forests, and her deeply personal memoirs, are enough to make this book a recommended read. One other aspect that truly sets the book apart is Ray's writing style, which at times evokes heartfelt emotion and, at it's best, waxes into pure poetry. Consider this passage as Ray describes spending a night in the pine savannas:

At evening in a Southern coastal-plain savanna, chuck-will's-widows call from the piney flatwoods a quarter mile upland. Not a rustle or hoof fall punctures the peace, except one moaning howl a mile a way that might be coyote or wildcat. Half the moon, like a broken dinner plate, poises directly overhead and the stars begin to appear, first in the nimbus of moon, then one by one across the lit sky. Soon a canopy of purple velvet is sewn with diamond flecks above the thick and hillocked grasses.

The dreaming is deep.

In the morning, a strip of pink pools through the slash pines in the lowland east. The fog is a garden wall made both of stone and imagination. In the garden a million million spiderwebs are spun of strands of dew - dream catchers, wind nets, hammocks of dawn. There are thousands of them, a revolution of spiderwebs in an anarchy of fog. It is like an ocean of webs, every tussock slung with a diaphanous nightcap.

The words are rich with imagery, and draw the reader into this beautiful part of the world that bears preserving. While the subject matter isn't always a pleasant read, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood never fails to compel.

Sidebar: The Rachel Carson Comparison

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood has a snippet from the review by the New York Times prominently displayed on the front cover:

"The forests of the Southeast find their Rachel Carson."

Well, maybe. Maybe not. This is in no way meant as a criticism of Ms. Ray's book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm just not sure that the Carson comparison is apt. Then again, I'm not sure that it isn't appropriate, as I've never read Rachel Carson's work.

You see, I also recently read Suburban Safari by Hannah Holmes. Prominently displayed on the front cover is this snipped from the review by Entertainment Weekly:

"Holmes is a Rachel Carson for 21st-century suburbia."

Having read these books just a few weeks apart, I can easily say that they are so vastly different that it is very unlikely that both authors resemble Rachel Carson. Yes, all three are concerned about humanity's impact on the other inhabitants of this planet. All three are also female. With Ray and Holmes, the comparison pretty much ends there. Holmes is witty, whimsical and scientific. Ray is poetic, introspective and emotional. Ray spends a lot of time talking about populations, while Holmes dedicates many pages to discussing individuals.

It is quite possible that more appropriate comparisons could be made to Audubon, Muir, Thoreau, or any of a host of other people who have written about nature. (Unfortunately, I haven't read a ton from these guys either, so I can't suggest who best fits with whom.) These writers need not be compartmentalized based solely upon their gender. When Rachel Carson's name is thrown about so liberally in these reviews, it begins to appear a bit trite.